Pages

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Another Sad Day

Another bad day today, unfortunately. First, the news that sixteen-year-old Nerdfighter and hayleyghoover follower, Esther Earl, died of cancer last night. I didn't know her, but I experienced her presence online over the last year, and she was quite the inspiring girl. It's absolutely tragic.

Far less important, but also emotionally distressing: today was Jess's farewell party. I self-medicated with an enormous episode of binge-eating, of unforgivable proportions. Mentally ill proportions. I cannot believe I ate that much today, truly. I'm sort of embarrassed to admit it, even, but it's hardly fair for me to share my weight loss success story without ever showing glimpses into the hard parts. Today was a sorrowful downward slide in the food department. I'll be making up for it for a week.

On top of all that, my mom and one of my sisters left for a business trip while I was traveling around, and their flight home got canceled, so I haven't seen either of them in what feels like forever, and they were stuck in a nasty airport all day. The garage door is growling as I type this, though, which means they're now home. Sorry for not feeling up to the senses and typical blog counters again today; I'm gonna go collapse on my mommy.

Your comments yesterday were beautiful and very much appreciated. Thank you for everything. I hope you all have nice Thursdays, and I'll see you tomorrow.

21 comments:

I'm feeling the pangs of friends leaving too. My two best friends in the world--one of whom I've been friends with since early childhood, much like you and Jess--both left for their freshman years of college within the past 48 hours. While they're not moving away for good (I can't imagine how horrible that must feel), I've still been miserably sad about it. :(

stay strong, hayley! Jess isn't going away forever. There's skype and email and while that isn't the same as having the physical person there with you, it's a nice little filler until you guys meet again. You're soul mates (even though you don't believe in that).

It's sad about Esther, too. It never feels real to me when people die. Nerdfighteria suffered a great loss

It's a lot, but I (and all of us) know that you can get through it, and we believe in you!That was really cheesy, but I don't really know exactly what to say, and I think we're all just upset about Esther.

No one can tell you they know exactly how you feel. Everyone's pain is different because everyone's relationships are different. But I can assure you--having moved thousands of miles away from my entire family and best friends 3 years ago--it sucks, but you'll endure. Your friendship will keep evolving as you grow as individuals, but the core of your relationship will remain. My platonic soulmate and I have dealt with some of the biggest changes possible (marriage, opposite lifestyle choices, etc.) but we still speak our own language (literally), still always there for each other in the dumb-but-meaningul way we've always been. Honestly, I wouldn't feel too bad about overeating on a day like today. Like, it's not healthy to solve all one's problems with food, but don't feel like you need to make-up for it or atone. Just accept it and return to normal eating as soon as possible. Often guilt about binging just leads to more binging. /long comment Lots of love.

Do whatever you need to do to feel better in the short-term, whether that's eating or spending time with family. Focusing on the short-term is sometimes horrible advice but there are circumstances where it's fitting. Anything detrimental will be corrected in due-time, you've shown yourself strong enough for that.

I've been watching old Esther videos a lot today. It's some weird combination of awesome and incredibly depressing.

You don't go back to school for a bit longer, do you? That's sometimes a good way to take your mind off things (classes and friends, not underage drinking).

I've been reading your blog since late 09 and I might have commented a few times before, but I never bothered introducing myself, I guess. Hi, Hayley. I'm Hilary. I like reading your blogs.

Anyway this isn't directly relevant to TODAY'S blog but I just want to say I spent 2 and a half years in a long distance relationship with a boy who lived a country and two thousand miles away. We eventually split because we'd basically failed to grow as people "together" I guess, which is one of those things that sounds ridiculous but is true. We both needed breathing room from each other which turned out to be frackind hard to get while we were dating, even with the distance.

Anyways, mostly I'm just saying (in a very story-telling way) that I at least understand how much it sucks and sometimes just leaves this depressing fuzz over everything else that's going on, even if those things aren't necessarily depressing in themselves. Also you have solidarity and empathy from me. Good luck, you two seem fantastic together and quite mature.

In other news, losing friends to distance sucks as well, and my brain is giving you lots of imaginary hugs. <3

Also the pyramid I was making from discarded batteries just toppled over and smashed a devastating hole in my pop-bottle-cap pyramid I made earlier. It was quite the architectural masterpiece and will take some time to rebuild.

I hate cancer too. I lost a lot too many people from cancer. Recently a boy from my school who was 17 died of cancer, he was my friend's brother. You could feel the atmosphere of dispair, everyone knew him in one way or another. My buddy partner, and my sister's friend was really young when she died. I was about 7 or 8 when she died. I hope that Esther's family knew how much she will be missed in the nerdfighter community and how awesome she was. Rest in Peace Esther. =[

You know what? Sometimes it's okay to be sad. Sometimes you're allowed to just wallow for a while until the clouds clear a little. I'm sure I speak for your other followers when I say you are free to rant at us any time you like.You're awesome Hayley.

Thanks for sharing, even when you are sad. Believe it or not, you talking about your emotional eating is helping me as well...as many of us do that very thing. You inspired me to work on becoming healthier and the fact that you share the lows as well as the highs reminds me that we all mistakes, then we get back on the horse. Is it strange knowing you are such an inspiration and role model, even for people who significantly older/younger? Thanks for being you!

I can understand how you feel about Jess. Or I guess I should say, I understand how Jess feels about leaving you. I'm packing up and moving to another state and leaving everyone I've ever known. I've lived in Colorado my entire life and coming up really quickly, I'll be headed to Tennessee where I know no one, and where I've never ever been before. I'm thinking about you both. :)

I didn't even know Esther personally and she didn't know me but I can't help but feel the sadness of losing such an amazing person with spirit and vivaciousness. Her presence will surely be missed by family and people who knew her through the Internet.

For having a friend move away part for school, I'm not going to say I know how you feel because I don't--that's a personal feeling. However, I am going through something similar yet I am the one that is leaving. I'm going to be leaving for University in a week and it's 18 hours away. I can't even fathom not being able to go to weekly movie nights, nightly drives, and going out for dinner with my best friend. It's going to be HARD. We'll make it through and so will you and Jess. It is just how life goes sometimes.